Uganda’s unsung heroes of refugee protection

As responses to refugees and asylum-seekers become a multi-million dollar endeavour globally, everyday acts of kindness continue to keep refugees alive and maintain their dignity, even in the face of death.

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Kampala. Photo: authorTwice a week, the flight tasked
with carrying bodies back to Eritrea departs from Uganda’s Entebbe airport. With
tens of thousands of Eritreans in the country’s capital, many in relatively
precarious positions, this service is in demand. Six weeks ago, it took a young
man, most likely killed in a motorbike accident in the city’s busy streets. The
following Thursday, it carried the body of another young Eritrean: Kifilit
Yemane*.

Nobody knows exactly why Kifilit,
a healthy 34 year old, died; there was no money available for a post-mortem. He’d
complained of feeling ill early in the day and went to rest. Somebody brought
him some hot milk which he vomited up, and then he lay down and died.

A week before this, I had entered
a small sandal shop in Kampala to interview him. His story of why he found his
way to Kampala was in no
way exceptional. After defying an order from his manager at the
construction firm he had worked at in Eritrea, life had become increasingly
hard for him. Recast as a political dissident, he spoke of the security forces
slowly honing in. Fearing indefinite imprisonment at best, Kifilit had fled the
country.

Leaving Eritrea, however, had
never been his wish. He had fought in the 1998-2000 border conflict
against Ethiopia, and served in national service with no thoughts of exiting
the country for over a decade. His decision to flee arose from what he considered
a direct threat to his life, he stressed, not the understandable yearnings for
a life beyond the shackles of indefinite
national service.

Afraid of what lay in Libya and
the Mediterranean, he had travelled to Uganda. This was a land that welcomed refugees,
he had been told, allowing them to live, work and move freely. The country’s
openness towards refugees, particularly relative to its regional
neighbours, has been widely noted. The latest
statistics from the Ugandan Government suggest the country may host 865,000
refugees. With a total population of around 40 million, that constitutes over 13 times more refugees per capita than the UK.

What has been less widely noted,
however, is that the government’s much lauded openness appears to come with a
price tag for some, leaving the protection of these refugees largely a
community affair.

Cash-for-status

It was only after three homeless
months that Kifilit was informed about where and how he could apply for refugee
status in Uganda. He had secured lodgings in exchange for helping at a local
bar, and the neighbour there took the time to explain to him how the system
worked.

Several months later, his
application was rejected. Unable to source the documents from Eritrea that
evidenced crucial parts of his claim, the Ugandan authorities deemed his case ‘not
acceptable’. As one staff member at the Ugandan government’s refugee
directorate flatly told me, ‘they don’t have reasons for leaving their country’,
so how can they expect refugee status? This was used to explain the low
recognition rates for Eritreans in Uganda, which the same individual mused
could not exceed 10%. Kifilit had appealed against this decision, but was not
optimistic.

The only other route to refugee
status, acknowledged by multiple staff working at the refugee directorate, is a
well-timed payment to the right members of staff. $700 – the cheapest going
rate for a registered acceptance letter and refugee I.D. card – was, however,
well beyond his means.

While many of those working with
refugees had treated him with respect, he made clear to stress, the business
minds of a few have turned the acquisition of a refugee ID card in to a racket
for Eritreans. From registering for asylum, through securing an appointment to
discuss their claims, to acquiring the status itself, all the Eritreans I spoke
to in Uganda had been asked to part with cash. This is in offices peppered with
signs reading ‘refugees and asylum seekers are NOT supposed to pay for any
service.’ When I called the ‘corruption hotline’ they recommend affected
refugees to ring, the phone repeatedly went unanswered.

Without family members outside of
Eritrea to send him remittances, refugee status – and a secure, legal route to
employment – were largely foreclosed to Kifilit. It was
nonetheless better to ‘live with hope’, he suggested, than to get another inevitable
rejection letter too soon.

Communities as ‘the first and last providers of protection’

With Uganda’s formal systems
failing him, Kifilit had spent his first three years in Kampala surviving off
donations from fellow asylum seekers and Ugandans. The first few months had
been particularly hard. With no friends or relatives already in the city, and
having exhausted his funds moving to Uganda overland from Asmara, he found
himself sleeping rough. After three days without food, a Ugandan woman had
knowingly placed a bag next to him containing a fresh chapatti.

Later on, after some brief
periods of casual labour, he had found a job at the shoe shop where we met. His
salary there was modest: his employees did not need additional labour, but had
seen him struggle to find an income. They had also given him free lodgings in
the workshop behind the shop.

Kifilit stressed his relief at
having finally found some reliable work. Though he had been desperate to begin ‘a
real life’, complete with education, a family and a home that was more than a
friend’s couch, he was aware that having found any employment without the legal
right to work was a blessing.

This is especially so in a city
like Kampala, where formal unemployment rates – especially of the youth – are
high. In 2016, the Ugandan
Government estimated that 1 in 6 under 30s were unemployed. Of the working
age population with a job, 85% are in informal employment. When a distraught
Ugandan man with an amputation above the right elbow interrupted our interview
to recount his struggle to pay his daughter’s hospital fees, Kifilit and my
Eritrean translator quickly dug around for some shillings. I commented that I
was not confident that people would have responded that way at home in Britain.
Everybody should be helped to survive today, they said, as then tomorrow,
together, you can start the struggle again.

When he suddenly died the next
day, a few hours after leaving the government’s refugee directorate where he
had been helping another Eritrean to process their claim, he left behind no
family, no money and no way of confirming his Eritrean citizenship. The
assurances of those he had befriended in Kampala, or knew from back in Asmara,
were not the documents needed to ensure his legal repatriation to Eritrea. For
that, other friends – those with no pressing protection needs of their own –
approached the Embassy of his government: a government seen by him as a
one-man-show towards which he could only express immense disappointment and anger.

Beyond this, $5000 had to be
found to cover the costs of his return to Eritrea for burial. While his friends
called contacts off his retrieved mobile phone to ask if anyone could donate,
his local Church held a collection and wealthy Eritreans anonymously came
forward with more sizeable contributions. Even with Christmas approaching, and
Eritreans regularly called upon by family members and friends to send through
money, it took under a week for this sum to be found.

With formal systems of protection
increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible, every part of Kifilit’s experience
in Uganda was shaped by friends, strangers and local communities who went out
of their way to assist and care for him. Whenever he could, he too had tried to
reciprocate. While this is clearly not an experience shared by all, with
anti-immigration rhetoric periodically surfacing in Ugandan politics, Kifilit’s
message had much wider applicability. As responses to refugees and
asylum-seekers often become multi-million dollar endeavours, everyday acts of
kindness keep thousands alive and guard their dignity, even in the face of
death.

Towards the end of our interview,
I asked Kifilit what would be the best solution to his situation. While many answered
that resettlement would be only feasible option for them right now, he
instantly replied that if the situation changed, he would return to Eritrea
tomorrow. One week later, on a plane from Entebbe and in circumstances not of
his choosing, he did. This was due to the unrequited acts of a diverse
community in Uganda who clearly believed that charity must start wherever
people are forced to make home. In death just as in life, they kept his dreams
alive.

* Kifilit’s name has not been changed. He specified that he did not
wish for anonymity and hoped that he might, one day, find his story being
useful on the internet.

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